Virtual Traveling Trunks- A New tool for Environmental Education
The History of Virtual Traveling Trunks
Traveling Trunks: Describes the use of portable educational boxes for bringing in educational multimedia on local and regional issues. Highlights programs that use this method and reports on a nationwide questionnaire for educators that examined the current use of this method. According to research, use of traveling environmental education trunks was increasing in many parts of North America. They are used extensively in the intermountain West, a region with many remote, rural schools in communities with challenging natural resource dilemmas, such as the loss of timber-based employment, declines as well as reintroductions of endangered species, and conflicts over the management of public rangelands and forests. Boxes in use throughout this region focus on a variety of environmental topics, including wolf recovery, neotropical migrant songbirds, threatened and endangered species, and prairie ecosystems. Two programs, developed by the National Wildlife Federation and the Montana Natural History Center, exemplify the use of traveling boxes. **http://www.eric.ed.gov/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=EJ873676**
Curriculum Plans- A new Tool for Environmental Education
Assessment: Given that most boxes are accompanied by interdisciplinary curriculum guides, they provide teachers not trained in EE or those who do not have time to design a comprehensive EE unit a means to present a focused EE experience with relatively little preparation. Additionally, given their low cost, the boxes are accessible to educators with limited budgets. With many programs now extant, future research should be conducted on their effectiveness, especially in regard to attitudinal change and methods of curriculum development and review.\http://escholarship.bc.edu/jtla

Suggested Students Classroom Activities toolsCassette tape of wolf howls, song, and musical activity
Photos evoking different emotions about wolves AND Abraham Lincoln
Books- On Traveling Trunks, Wolf Pack--Tracking Wolves in the Wild by the Science.

Video:
Plaster casts of tracks: wolf, coyote, mountain lion, elk
Scat samples: wolf, coyote, dog, elk, Poster of wolf, Rubber wolf stamp, Wooden puppet of wolf that can be positioned to demonstrate different behavioral postures
Wooden blocks: that illustrate the plant, herbivore, and predator communities and what happens when one, or part of one, is eliminated.
http://VTTrunks-esther-project-wikispaces//

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File:Attachments: 2-PPT-Story Board and Activities, Accessments for Elementary Students.